2022 · InadvisablyCompelled · 302 pages · Urban Fantasy / Progression Fantasy
Paranoid Mage delivers a refreshing urban fantasy built on a clever inversion of the genre's usual power fantasy, where magic brings only danger and the smartest move is always to run.
2001 · Neil Gaiman · 541 pages · Fantasy
Neil Gaiman's 2001 novel about old gods fading in modern America is ambitious, atmospheric, and deeply weird in the best sense. The mythology is inventive, the road trip structure captures something essential about American geography and identity, and Wednesday is one of Gaiman's most magnetic creations. Shadow Moon is a passive protagonist who frustrates readers looking for a more active lead, and the novel's sprawling structure creates pacing issues in the middle third. But as a meditation on belief, immigration, and what America does to the stories people bring with them, American Gods remains Gaiman's most substantial work.